DIARY 45 - Remake and Remodel

My first week managing the Customer Services Team, without the former manager there to advise or train me, has gone OK, despite my prophetic anxiety about calamity descending upon me. To be honest, the day to day work of the Team is not rocket science, once you have become familiar with the XAL system, it really comes down to communication skills. There are, of course, unexpected or unfamiliar disasters happening all the time, but mostly these turn out to be opportunities to expand areas of competence. Most of the other difficulties appear to be essentially organisational, usually ineffective or poorly maintained working practices in other departments of the business. When these fall over its Customer Services who have to pick up the pieces with the disappointed or angry customer. Finding ways to appease, placate and compensate is our core task. Try as we might to encourage things to improve,much of it is outside our sphere to influence. It inevitable comes down to human failings or error, for which there is no accounting – which in management speak becomes inadequate supervision or training, manpower shortage or systemic incompetence.

The consistency of my lifestyle and practice has been a bit ragged over the last month. This is entirely down to the amount of change and learning of new things that have been going on in my life at the moment. Now things are stabilising work wise, this is beginning to change, as I restore activities that help my lifestyle be both sustainable and enjoyable. I've already started going swimming once a week, something that stopped altogether when I worked at the Crematorium. David and I are going to buy bicycles this weekend which will increase our mobility immensely.

I've been writing a piece called 'Binding one's Self without a rope' for some time. I left it alone for a few months, but returned to it the other weekend to do a bit of housekeeping, only I couldn't get into the file. Once David returned from solitary retreat he rescued it from oblivion for me. When I looked at, it seemed to have reverted to an entirely earlier version and jumbled up the sequence, whilst other sections were missing all together. So, rather irritatedly, I've spent a good part of Sunday and three evenings this week restoring it, using a hard copy I had as reference and an e.mail attachment version for the missing bits. Without the latter I wouldn't be writing this blog entry this morning. I'm hoping to publish it soon as an article in Shabda, which is the Western Buddhist Orders monthly publication for reporting in, forum for debate and information etc. The start of the week, my own personal time was largely dominated by this task, not a thing I'd chose to do with my evenings off, but had to be done none the less. So, this weekend I'd like to focus on doing more nourishing creative things, and spending time with the people I love.